Thanks for changing the title, I had conflated Wells and Welles
hoi.polloi wrote:
The article was (ostensibly) written by one "Martin Chilton". He can be found writing more recently on Hiroshima being bombed into a "Hell on Earth" and the subject of the Titanic's "last lunch menu".
I do politely recommend you check your sources and facts, Seneca. It seems sometimes we have forgotten just how much propaganda is ongoing, all the time.
I was aware that the article could be propaganda, but I didn't present the claims as facts. Only as a possibility that is rarely mentioned. In my view no professional journalist can be considered a reliable source so I don't felt a need to investigate him. We have to evaluate the info based on its own merits. If you still think I wasn't clear, can you suggest how I should bring an article that apparently debunks a mainstream belief?
The only fact I wanted to share was that this alternative view exists and that I find it interesting from a media fakery perspective. Maybe this is not enough to start a new topic. So for now the lesson I learn from this is that if I don't want to spend much time researching something I won't start a new topic. I probably should have put it in the chatbox.
But now that this topic is here, there is an interesting quote I overlooked the first couple of readings.
AND IT'S NOT A GOOD IDEA TO COPY ORSON WELLES . . .
In February 1949, Leonardo Paez and Eduardo Alcaraz produced a Spanish-language version of Welles's 1938 script for Radio Quito in Ecuador. The broadcast set off panic. Quito police and fire brigades rushed out of town to fight the supposed alien invasion force. After it was revealed that the broadcast was fiction, the panic transformed into a riot. The riot resulted in at least seven deaths, including those of Paez's girlfriend and nephew. The offices Radio Quito, and El Comercio, a local newspaper that had participated in the hoax by publishing false reports of unidentified flying objects in the days preceding the broadcast, were both burned to the ground.
True or not, it is interesting don't you think? Especially the reaction of the hoi poloi of Ecuador's capital after they heard it was a show. There are other sources, here from a website that wants you to buy some books.
At last the station staff realized just what was happening in the streets. A belated admission and plea for calm was broadcast, which is when things got really serious. Up until this moment, no one appears to have been seriously hurt, but now a great many people in Quito were acutely aware they had been fooled, and were looking for something or someone to vent their fury upon. El Comercio, the largest and most respected paper in the country, owned radio Quito and the station was housed in the same building as the newspaper. It was to this location that the mob advanced, and in what might have seemed an ironic act by the crowd, set fire to copies of the El Comercio newspaper and hurled these (and other objects) at the building. The main entrance was blocked and a fire swiftly broke out. Some of the besieged staff of 100 people escaped from a rear exit, but many were trapped on upper floors and were forced in some desperate cases to leap from windows. Others attempted to form human chains to the ground, but many fell. The reported figures for the eventual death toll varies between about 6 and 20, with the former considered the more realistic number, but regardless of the how many died or were injured, it was a clearly a terrifying night with some despicable acts reported.
http://www.war-ofthe-worlds.co.uk/war_worlds_quito.htm
There are several reasons why this play was so much more dangerous: 1. The station used was the most popular one in the city, as opposed to Welles’ channel, which had very low ratings. To make sure more people were listening, they embedded the play in a performance by popular singers Luis Alberto ‘Potolo’ Valencia and Gonzalo Benítez. 2. There was no disclaimer at the beginning of the program. Welles’ play did have a disclaimer, though reportedly most of the people who heard the broadcast tuned in five minutes later while channel flipping. One story is that the “Chase and Sanborn Hour” had an unpopular singer on that night, inspiring more people to change the channel and land in the middle of what sounded like a legitimate news broadcast. 4. Instead of using fake, yet convincing experts like the Welles’ play, actors convincingly impersonated real government officials.
http://lynncinnamon.com/2013/10/the-rea ... ed-deadly/
Maybe they use this story in journalism school to teach journalists why it's wrong to
tell a lie tell the truth about the lies of their colleagues.